Actual populations

I just started and before that tried to find out where the popular servers where (fearing that Euro servers would be full of non English speaking players). Only clue I've seen so far is a note saying Light/Medium/Heavy. Any idea how you can check actual player numbers?

For example Chimeara said medium, yet after a few days of playing I can wander around for ages and see no one (wrong planet/city perhaps?).

population density is really based on where you are. For example the area between Bestine and Wayfar on chimaera is always packed with poeple, being 3 player cities there. While if you were to travel to say, Mos Espa its very quiet.

On the other hand the back water planets [Lok, Endor, Yavin etc] as soon as you leave the outpost its very unlikly that you will see another person/group before you return to the outpost. Its quiet like the real world, cities are always busy, but once you get off the main roads and away from the cities theres relativly few people about.

Sorry - first line should read - I just started on Chimaera - so I'm already there.

I'm on Talus at the moment, but it just seems to be that the servers could support a lot more players than they are at the moment (perhaps the back end processing/physical computing power is too great to have that many people on one server?).

Just want to know if anyone could say Chimaera has 1000 people on it - or 10000 (with certainty).

I've not seen any actual figures for any servers anywhere, but from my experience from DAoC I'd guess at around 3-5k peeps on Chimaera at peak time.

A total guess but let me say why I think so (unless otherwise stated the figures are primetime)

The player density around the busiest starports like Bestine and Anchorhead, easily 30+
Quiet cities, starter cities a good dozen players
Outback planet cities, a small handful unless a party is coming through.
A new server a month after Euro release

In all, I'm seeing slightly higher figures than I'd see from comparable areas in DAoC from a game that is of similiar geographical size (all realms). So with a similiar set up to GOA I'd say they maxed Chimarea at whatever level they consider to be the max (remembering there doesnt appear to be an actual hard cap). Thats what? best guess is what I said above, 3-5k online at peak.

The frame rate problems in places like Coronet can be alleviated with lots of RAM and turning a few graphics options down. Get 1 Gb RAM and you won't regret it. The vendor delays in busy places do look to be a server issue, though. Its best to do shopping elsewhere, imo.

I really doubt they'll be upgrading the hardware any time soon. The games only been running for a few months and I doubt a slight boost in the hardware will make a significant difference. I'm sure there are still a few bottlenecks in the code that, if sorted, would make more of a difference than a hardware upgrade.